Hospital at Home Treatment for Chronically Ill Patients

Given the choice, would you want to go to the hospital or stay at home for treatment of a chronic illness? If you said, “stay at home” this could be an option soon.

“Hospital at Home” programs are already available in Australia, England, Israel and Canada and, there are a few being tried out right here in the United States.

Research is already proving how these programs could provide a cost-effective, quality healthcare alternative, especially for an aging baby boomer population.

Dr. Bruce Leff, director of geriatric health services research at John Hopkins School of Medicine, who started the concept, has done a study of three such programs that have already demonstrated positive results. According to his research “patient outcomes were similar or better, satisfaction was higher, and costs were 32 percent less than traditional hospitalizations.”

It was also found that there were 38 percent fewer deaths of patients in hospital at home programs, than among those being treated in hospitals. “Imagine if there was a pill that did that: everyone would want it,” said Leff.

Mark McClelland, assistant professor at the Center for Health at George Washington University, says hospital at home programs are successfully working out and could become common in five-years time. For now, “we’re still in the early adoption phase” where doctors are uncertain about “doing hospital-level services at home.”

Read the full report from Kaiser Health News: “Some Patients Can Choose To Be Hospitalized at Home”